Sleep Apnea Support Group
Sleep apnea is a common sleep disorder characterized by brief interruptions of breathing during sleep. People with sleep apnea partially awaken as they struggle to breathe, but in the morning they may not be aware of sleep disturbances.
How do I get him to do a sleep study?
Background:
He snores so loud that I sometimes get woken up from his snoring. I can hear him stop breathing throughout his sleeping/napping. He'll fall silent, chest still and then he'll loudly inhale or gasp at times. He's always tired. He's told me he wakes up tired everyday and has since he was in high school.
He refuses to admit there's a problem. When I ask him to see a doctor he gets defensive. He says he doesn't want to have to wear a mask to bed. But my stepmom has sleep apnea and wears the CPAP and has told him it's not that bad. It hasn't helped.
I'm just really scared for him and I am tired of getting poor sleep.
Any advice that could help me to get him to see a doctor?
Background:
He snores so loud that I sometimes get woken up from his snoring. I can hear him stop breathing throughout his sleeping/napping. He'll fall silent, chest still and then he'll loudly inhale or gasp at times. He's always tired. He's told me he wakes up tired everyday and has since he was in high school.
He refuses to admit there's a problem. When I ask him to see a doctor he gets defensive. He says he doesn't want to have to wear a mask to bed. But my stepmom has sleep apnea and wears the CPAP and has told him it's not that bad. It hasn't helped.
I'm just really scared for him and I am tired of getting poor sleep.
Any advice that could help me to get him to see a doctor?
If that doesn't change his mind nothing will, sometimes people need to understand what this illness does to them and their loved ones.
Also start looking up webstes about the things that sleep apnea can do to people, things like, heart attack, stroke, depression, some cancer, diabeties, etc, etc.
Some people can be very silly, I was diagnosed 4 years ago but lived with it for 48 years, I wish I had know when I was young.
http://www.sleep-apnea-guide.com/james-gray-bolton.html
Sorry this will be a long post but I will try to explain it, first, they is no cure, only a gold standard treatment which is CPAP.
If he has sleep apnea, it only gets worse as you get older, if you get older.
The longer you go untreated the worse you get and longer it takes to get better.
Sleeping with a mask and a machine is a small price to pay for a long and quality life.
There are 3 types of Sleep Apnea, Obstructive - where your throat collapse over your airway or tongue covers your airway, Central - your brain tells you not to both breathing, Complex - a mixture of both which is what I have.
Apnea's are when we stop breathing for 10 secs or more.
The normal person stops breathing 5 or less times per hour, there are 3 levels of sleep apnea, 5-15 mild, 15-30 moderate and 30+ servere, all have to use a CPAP at different pressures.
I have servere and stop breating 30 times an hour when i don't us my CPAP, I go to a class for depression and a guy their stops breathing 120 times an hour, that's very 30 secs.
So what happenes when we stop breathing, obviously our brains and hearts don't get the vital blood and oxygen they needs, but whats worse is we wake up either conciously or subconciously everytime in shock, it's called the filght or flight response.
Our blood rushes from our extremeties, our arms and legs and goes to our heart and brain, our vital organs.
Can you imagine how much stress that puts on your body. This is more than likely when he sweats. We wake up so many times a night, we never get proper sleep so find it hard to function the next day and this goes on and on and on.
A CPAP keeps your airways open and tells us what we are doing every minute of the night.
It's Sunday morning here in Australia and last night my average apneas were 1.9 per hour.
Hope this helps a bit, if your boyfriend won't listen there is nothing you can do, I feel sorry for him but even more for you as you seem like a caring person.
Just try to suggest he go see a GP and they should recommend a Sleep Specialist.
Try your best but in the long run it is his life and he need to be the one to do something about it.
Please ask any questions anytime.
Is the cost affordable or is it usually a large amount? He has insurance but I know it won't cover everything.